By Stuart Whytcross

Thumbnail Scotland has a rich beer history with evidence of brewing dating back to 3000 years ago. The Celtic tradition of using bittering herbs remained in Scotland longer than the rest of Europe, and although they soon followed the rest of the brewing world, a recent revival of bittering with herbs is re-emerging amongst many brewers in Scotland.

Traditionally in Scotland, brewing was done by the “broustaris”, or alewives, and monasteries. Records show that in 1509 Aberdeen had over 150 brewers – all women!

By the mid 19th century Edinburgh had forty breweries and was “acknowledged as one of the foremost brewing centres in the world“, the success of Scotland’s brewing industry was partly due to the fact that Tax on beer was held at a lower amount than the rest of the United Kingdom, there was no tax on malt in Scotland…and I’m guessing their beers must have tasted alright as well!

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by Sam Highley, Editor

Comp_thumb The judging for club competition one kicked off at the crack of 11am last Sunday morning, with beers in the Mild, Northern English Brown, American Brown, Irish Red, Ordinary Bitter, Scottish 60′, California Common, Extra Special Bitter (ESB), English and American IPA, Weizen, Dunkelweizen, Blonde Ale and Belgian Wit styles up for judging. Owing to the large number (15) of entries in the American Pale Ale category, they were judged a few nights earlier, along with the two American Brown’s entered.

As usual, the entries were judged against the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) guidelines, with each beer being scored on aroma, appearance, flavour, mouthfeel and overall impression, up to a maximum of 50 points. In this case, each beer was judged by three judges, with the individual scores added together to give a final score out of 150. But i’ve waffled on enough, and everyone is here for one thing, so here are the results:


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By Patrick Baggoley

Sprucemoose Having not brewed for about five years, when I finally got the last couple of pieces of gear together to try my first all grain batch in January 2009, I decided to get back into it with a vengeance. 

As most do, I spent my few couple of batches propping up various vessels on milk crates, benches and saw horses, and each time I’d end up trying a different configuration. I’d trip over things, misplace mash paddles and thermometers and generally get very confused. This meant it was hard to get parts of the process such as mash-in, recirculating and sparging properly co-ordinated and consistent.

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By Darryl Barbour, President

President G’Day brewers and welcome to Presidents Report #2 (such an inspiring intro surely bodes well for report #11). The committee continues to tick along, though as we only meet every second month there is not a lot of news to announce this month, but do have a few things we’ve been following since our January meeting.

We have again been invited to the Australian Science Festival which will be held across three venues from 2–15 August 2010. We’ve got a meeting with some of the organisers straight after the next club meeting so we will soon have some more details. However, if previous years are anything to go by we will be looking for up to a dozen brewers to help staff the stall over one weekend and promote the club and brewing to all and sundry (of legal age of course). Apparently gastronomy is also getting a showing at the festival, which will tie in well to the second half of the brewing craft! We will also be looking at arrangements and hopefully we can get the beer tastings back on the table this year.

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